DAW and Bedroom Producers...

[DJAnyStyle]

Sup brother? One love! A legend on the boards (and on the message board).

Didn't see this posted yet, so thought I'd bring it up. What are your thoughts on the ability to get a solid mix from tunes concepted and born of a home studio, specifically a laptop based solution?

I work primarily in Live 6 and Reason and always wonder about taking it from my system (monitored on KRK V6's via a Rane mixer) to a final master? Any recommendations for the process going in or coming out?

Thanks in advance! I know you're hella busy.

Thanks for always keeping it real!

DJAnyStyle

[Russell Elevado]

what's up Abe! it's been a long time. call me so we can hang...
you picked a nasty question...

What are your thoughts on the ability to get a solid mix from tunes concepted and born of a home studio, specifically a laptop based solution?

from my experience, seperating (as many of) your tracks and bringing them up on an analog mixer/console always sounds better than just coming from a stereo out of your DAW. i give people a lot of credit if they can get a great mix from staying "in the box". the budget always plays a big role in the end. but if you're on a tight budget you have to make the best of it. mixing or working in the box has never been an ideal situation for me, so i don't do it. i can't get things to work for me like i normally can. everything about it is different than what i do. i don't want to stare at a computer screen to make music. i like physical contact with faders and knobs. not to mention the brittleness and coldness of the sound. i haven't worked on any digital consoles, so i can't speak about that.

so with that said...save your money and buy some hi end gear. i'm very spoiled as i've always had nice equipment to work with so it's easy for me to say this. but instead of buying 7 pro-sumer things with $1000, buy 1 or 2 pro things. the gear does make a huge difference. DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE! in audio, cheap means cheap. there's a reason why a 1073 neve module is $4000 versus an entire Universal Audio plug-in bundle which seems like such a great deal. Do you really think that the $300 plugin version of the LA2A is really going to sound like the real thing? Don't waste your money on fancy "brand name" plug-ins. DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE! Even mixing on a mackie analog 24 X 8 console is going to sound better than staying in the box.

scenario:
so let's say you have a mackie 24x8 (ebay $1300). you've got 56 tracks you need to mix. i would start by comping things. bring up all the vocals seperated out on the mackie. now you can group all of them (or parts) to a stereo compressor and eq. get your blends happening (automate them if you want in your DAW) and do your compression and eq. get them to sound real good, then record them back in. do this with as many thing as you can. now you've got a bunch of eq'd stereo tracks (or mono) of all your elements pre-mixed. now bring them all back up on the console.
eg: you saved 8 channels for your drums to stay seperated, you have the background vocals on 2 sets of stereo tracks, ld voc on a single track, bass on it's own track, guitars in stereo, keys in stereo, perc in stereo, etc. now you can finish your mix from there.

I've only had experience with this using pro tools. there might be a difference with other DAWs. I know the radar blows away pro tools in the sound department!
the trick is to eliminate summing of tracks within your DAW. try this experiment. take all the vocal tracks and sum them to a stereo track within your DAW and record it. now take those same vocals and put them out on individual outputs and bring them up on an analog console and get the same blend as you did within your DAW. now compare it with the summed stereo track and listen to the difference!

i'll be talking more about DAW's in the thread called "what's your thoughts on pro tools?"
What are your thoughts on Pro Tools?

cheers

Originally Posted by Russell Elevado

what's up Abe! it's been a long time. call me so we can hang...
you picked a nasty question...
from my experience, seperating (as many of) your tracks and bringing them up on an analog mixer/console always sounds better than just coming from a stereo out of your DAW. i give people a lot of credit if they can get a great mix from staying "in the box". the budget always plays a big role in the end. but if you're on a tight budget you have to make the best of it. mixing or working in the box has never been an ideal situation for me, so i don't do it. i can't get things to work for me like i normally can. everything about it is different than what i do. i don't want to stare at a computer screen to make music. i like physical contact with faders and knobs. not to mention the brittleness and coldness of the sound. i haven't worked on any digital consoles, so i can't speak about that.

so with that said...save your money and buy some hi end gear. i'm very spoiled as i've always had nice equipment to work with so it's easy for me to say this. but instead of buying 7 pro-sumer things with $1000, buy 1 or 2 pro things. the gear does make a huge difference. DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE! in audio, cheap means cheap. there's a reason why a 1073 neve module is $4000 versus an entire Universal Audio plug-in bundle which seems like such a great deal. Do you really think that the $300 plugin version of the LA2A is really going to sound like the real thing? Don't waste your money on fancy "brand name" plug-ins. DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE! Even mixing on a mackie analog 24 X 8 console is going to sound better than staying in the box.

scenario:
so let's say you have a mackie 24x8 (ebay $1300). you've got 56 tracks you need to mix. i would start by comping things. bring up all the vocals seperated out on the mackie. now you can group all of them (or parts) to a stereo compressor and eq. get your blends happening (automate them if you want in your DAW) and do your compression and eq. get them to sound real good, then record them back in. do this with as many thing as you can. now you've got a bunch of eq'd stereo tracks (or mono) of all your elements pre-mixed. now bring them all back up on the console.
eg: you saved 8 channels for your drums to stay seperated, you have the background vocals on 2 sets of stereo tracks, ld voc on a single track, bass on it's own track, guitars in stereo, keys in stereo, perc in stereo, etc. now you can finish your mix from there.

I've only had experience with this using pro tools. there might be a difference with other DAWs. I know the radar blows away pro tools in the sound department!
the trick is to eliminate summing of tracks within your DAW. try this experiment. take all the vocal tracks and sum them to a stereo track within your DAW and record it. now take those same vocals and put them out on individual outputs and bring them up on an analog console and get the same blend as you did within your DAW. now compare it with the summed stereo track and listen to the difference!

i'll be talking more about DAW's in the thread called "what's your thoughts on pro tools?"
What are your thoughts on Pro Tools?

cheers

Do you have any specific preference for converters?

[AMIEL]

Hi Russell! I agree with you about summing in analog for many reasons.....not only about the actual "Summing".

Russell..do you think a summing box system like a Neve 8816, a API DMS o a SSL Xrack would put the sound quality of a DAW in a higher level?

[halfguard]

wow, you almost make me want to run out and buy a mackie......